By WAYNE RATKOVICH

We check the stock market daily and sometimes hourly to see how our portfolios are faring. Even more important, we Angelenos look for signs that confidence has returned, knowing full well that it is confidence that will secure our jobs, raise our portfolios, lift our spirits and bring us new opportunities.

We read the financial publications more thoroughly than ever, follow the news coming out of Washington with great attentiveness and hang on every word from the new president and his economic advisers. We yearn to hear something positive from somebody, but positive messages seem as hard to find as a winning lottery ticket.

I admit to participating in all of the above, but I also acknowledge that my patience is running thin. I will continue to listen and watch, but our company is also adopting a new strategy. We are going to focus on what our company, our employees and our management team can do to make things better.

As General Motors dances on the edge of failure, it is time for small businesses like ours to step into the arena, to take responsibility for our survival and our prosperity. It is America’s optimism, ingenuity and entrepreneurship that built the greatest economy in human history. So back to the basics we go.

Our optimism deals with the current circumstances by looking for what can realistically be accomplished. It understands that succeeding in the current environment requires a level of effort and professionalism that far exceeds the “satisfactory standards” of more prosperous times. It believes that the dramatic changes that are in process will create opportunities for us to provide a needed service. It recognizes that capital is being carefully rationed and believes that capital can be secured for a business opportunity that is meticulously analyzed and thoughtfully formulated.

We now know that financial engineering was an attempt to take a mathematical shortcut to success. It turned out to be exactly the opposite a protracted journey to massive financial failure. Financial engineering, financial analysis and financial structuring are all valuable tools to maximize the success of a sound business concept that is professionally formulated by creative and well-informed minds. Financial wizardry follows, not leads.

We view our employees as assets, not payroll liabilities. We will make reductions in everything we can think of before we resort to reducing our remarkably competent, experienced and loyal staff. It is our people that enable our company to perform at the highest professional standards that are required by the current market.

Part of being a well-informed business manager is staying abreast of the wider environment in which one operates. Understandably, the scale of the current financial crisis has us looking for hope and answers wherever we can find them.

That said, these days we are spending more time looking inside our organization for what we can do to support our own prosperity and the prosperity of those with whom we do business.

Wayne Ratkovich is president and chief executive of Ratkovich Co., a commercial real estate firm in Los Angeles.